Expectation Maximization

03/07/07

In Great Company..

I thought I'd put up a nice post about the album, its making, the singers, the stories.. For some reason, I just cannot get myself to write so much.. Go listen to the songs here.. Go..

on 6 March, 2007

Going with an edit of a previous draft..

I have been waiting for an album like this for a long time. In Great Company is an album of covers that's a combination of some of my more recent recordings and a bunch of duets. Of course, the duets take the spotlight. Six songs with six very special people. As I said, this album took a long time to get ready, but it was worth the wait.

Planning for this album started almost a year back, around April 2006. I wanted to record an album of duets and had some songs in mind. A few hurried phone calls (mostly to India) and I already had five (or was it four?) people all excited about the recording. So, we started looking at possible song choices. That part was easy, we each had some "unfinished" song that we had waited a while to record. With each song that was finally recorded, came a memory that we'd cherish.. Till we record again!

All Over Again, the first duet on the album, was an on-again-off-again venture. Bincy was not too keen on recording this at first. I asked her to just try two lines, since we already had the gear all set up. She did, and when she heard it back, she was thrilled and wanted to complete the song! I knew then that this duet would be the one that would open the pack.

The Prayer has to be the toughest duet we have ever performed. I think Ruth agrees with me (for once!) on this. At times, we switch the male and female parts because the original is a little out of our league. We wanted to record the song way back in 2005, but never got the opportunity to do so. Well, we finally did, and even though Ruth wants a gazillion things changed in the recording ("I don't like how I sound at the start of the chorus...", "Nooooo!! Chint! How could you?!") we're extremely happy to have completed this. This duet has an accompanying video that was originally created for Listen to our Hearts, a fund-raiser that SARs had organized in Jun 2005.

Sindu and I have a history with Mary Did You Know. We loved the original duet, by Kenny Rogers and Wynnona Judd, but could never find that version's track. Ended up performing it for a show, singing the song on some other track. I was very excited when I found the track (yea, these things excite me) after searching for almost a year! When we finally recorded, we were so sure of our parts that we completed it in less than two hours (and were pretty surprised that we did; Sindu looked at me and said "..that's it eh?.."). This song too has an accompanying video.

Bless the Broken Road was not the song I had originally wanted to record with Binu (hereinafter referred to as "BinChach" also known as "The Chach" or "The Great Wisdomous Daddy"). Ask BinChach to explain to you his reasons for the switch. But we had a good time recording this one anyway. It was especially challenging since we did not even have an uninformative prior (taken from ) to work with. We had to re-structure the song as a duet and do it with that country twang! Oh! How could I have forgotten to mention?! BinChach also goes by the alias "Blainu Chach", owing to his ability to perform some... ahem... special feats.

You Raise Me Up was another duet that Abhay (Bach, my little brother) and I had performed at Listen to our Hearts. We did it as a surprise for our parents, it was a special song and I wanted to record it. I thank Bach (the big rockstar ) for singing it with me; (maybe I just bullied him into it, maybe he'll sit on me for writing this). We did this song on the very last day that I was in India, Bach had come to see me off and we recorded his part on that morning; my part was done about two weeks later. Ah, the advantages of modern multi-track recording.. Almost anything is possible!

And that brings us to Promiscuous. Sandhya and I did not, I repeat, DID NOT, intend to record this song as our duet! What can I say? We tried it for fun, had a whole lotta fun doing it and decided, "let's stick with this!". We're just lowly grad students in the US, and as such, have no real houses or assets or in some cases, furniture. The only place we found suitable to place the mic so that it was high enough to sing into, was the kitchen counter! This song was recorded in Sandhya's kitchen, somewhere in the middle of Kansas! The good part of that was, the food was right there when we got hungry.

So there you have it, six songs, six people, six stories. The album title went through quite a few iterations before In Great Company was finally chosen. The reason? I love the company of these people; it was great..